Prologue
Heroes are meant to be young. Heroes are meant to be brave, or special. Even the 'unlikely' heroes still appeal to the general public as 100% hero material. Heroes are meant to be brave, honorable and compassionate Humans, or Sangheili.
I was none of those. I was truly an unlikely hero. I certainly didn't look the part; I was slender, small-boned, and could scarcely hit better than an Unggoy with a broken hand. For some reason I was born with a pessimistic view of life; those who care enough about me to notice say that I have a perpetual scowl upon my face.
That isn't true. It isn't a scowl to be precise, but it has the same effect. Generally I put everyone around me in a bad mood. I'm surprised they didn't use me as a weapon to demoralize the enemy. With my 'scowl' I could probably get half of your army to commit suicide. In case you're wondering, you are the enemy. Well, not you precisely, but rather your people; your kind.
Humans.
The so-called race of heroes. Truly, the only other species so arrogant as to name themselves that are the Sangheili. At least they look the part.
Apparently, you Humans ask us why we tried to commit genocide. Why we didn't offer you mercy. Whenever I hear a human speak about the evils the Covenant perpetrated, I laugh at the hypocrisy. I mean, really! Your kind willingly performed evils far beyond the description! You claim to hold our religious warfare horrible, but have you seen your own past? What were they called now—the Crusades? The Jihad?
If there is one thing my kind cannot tolerate, it is inconsistency. You understand, of course; us being what we are and all. We are loyal beyond any mere Human capacity; you consider us mindless because of our tireless zeal. Really now. You humans can be so dense.
I'm pretty sure you're tired of listening to me berate your species. Actually, I'm tired of that too. And by that look on your face, you probably want me to actually tell you the accursed story and so you can write it down, correct?
Oh, maybe I should mention who I am. Yes, I imagine that would be helpful. Highly helpful, in fact. My name is indecipherable in your language, and in your clumsy method of spelling. So I'll simply tell you what my name means.
Wingbeat.
Chapter One
You humans talk loud and long about the atrocities and tragedies you faced during the war. The Sangheili talk loud and long about the atrocities and tragedies the visited upon their enemies upon the war. Humans complain, Sangheili boast. My kind, the Yanme'e, we just talk.
Not the way you talk, of course. Our conversations are horribly quick. It may take you several seconds to say the different syllables in a sentence, but for my people, a sentence is a one-second variable chirp that flies wildly about the sonic spectrum. Much like the way those damned Huragok speak. Despite their faults, they at least have an efficient method of speech. Unlike you foolish two-leggeds.
There were no events talked about more than the twin pivotal moments in Yanme'e history; when we joined the Covenant, and when that selfsame Covenant broke. I shall cover one topic briefly, and then the other.
That was a sigh, wasn't it? You want me to 'cut to the chase' and tell you about what I did during the Great Schism?
No, no! I asked you a question, are you going to interrupt me as I tell you this tale, or are you going to shut up and let me tell it my very informational yet roundabout way?
Are you sure?
Sure?
Okay, fine. Allow me to cover the event of the invasion of the Covenant.
We had pretty good ships. A lot of them.
They had better ships. A whole lot of them.
We blew away a lot of their ships; the worst losses the Covenant fleet went through until the end of the Covenant-Human war. We fought them repeatedly; initiated our own plans and schemes to counteract their plans and schemes.
Then they found our homeworld. Like that, the war was over!
Okay, that's enough of old Yanme'e history for now.
WILL YOU STOP SIGHING!
I don't care if it was a sigh of relief! I'll tell the story my, way, godsdamnit!
Okay. Now the other one; the Great Schism.
We Yanme'e are loyal to the extreme. I'm sure I've said this before, but redundancy never hurt.
…
You didn't sigh. Good for you! You're learning!
Where was I? Oh yes. The Yanme'e are loyal. More so than any other race in the Covenant. This is because we are hive creatures; loyalty is so hardwired into our flesh and being that not being absolutely loyal results in our being put on a ship and sent to a concentration camp to be worked to death.
Indeed, I, Wingbeat, was sent to a concentration camp. There, I was meant to have suffered long. I was too unruly, you see; not completely psychopathic, but of questionable mental health. Namely, I hit another Yanme'e and told him to go away from my food net and go flutter about some other piece of dung like the fly he was.
This did not go over so well.
You have to understand, the Yanme'e are hive creatures. While taking a swing at a fellow human is not all that bad for you people, for the Yanme'e it is a crime beyond description.
I was sent to Yanme'e Detention Facility 2A in the Vessa star system, near the edge of Covenant-held territory, near human space. The reason for this? The said detention facility was mine; specifically a lithium mine. Covenant ships sometimes utilize lithium for fusion reactors. However, you humans still use the barbaric fission reactors, so there would be not tactical advantage to attacking the detention facility. Also, if all the Yanme'e there were killed, who cares? There the delinquents/horrid evil egg-eaters (the two nearly synonymous in Yanme'e terms) are sent to be humiliated and worked to death by Kig-Yar overseers anyway, perishing upon the machines that worked the mine.
Pleasant.
The mine itself resembled a large barnacle with a rod stabbed through it; a flat cone with a cylindrical control tower and engine room. This large space barnacle was stuck to a large asteroid. Apparently, the mine's task was to find an asteroid, latch onto it, dig a large set of unpressurized catacombs in it and peel away all it needed, letting as many workers die there as possible, of course, the leave it bled dry and find another asteroid to mine.
The small, pathetic cargo ship I was in cruised slowly to a standstill next to the mine; it extended a grav tube to one port, and pulled in the ore. The captain of the vessel, a Kig-Yar shipmistress, oversaw the loading of the lithium. She was flanked by two Kig-Yar soldiers; their distinctive aqua shields capable of being used as riot shields, flank defense, or in this case, VIP protection.
I, too, was flanked by two Kig-Yar soldiers; this was a tad bit unnecessary, as my wings were hobbled and my arms were handcuffed. I waited as the lithium flowed into the Always Revere the Gods (classic unoriginal Kig-Yar naming right here) and just sat. And I waited. And I waaaaaiiiiiiiiiited.
Then, I risked my own neck to ask the Shipmistress a question. I phrased it as unoffensively as possible.
"Excuse me, o Queen Bird-thing, but I think the whole point was to punish me aboard the Detention Facility, not bore me to death right here."
That earned me a hard blow to the back of the head from one of my Kig-Yar wardens. The Shipmistress gave me a cold look. "You are an impertinent Drone." She said, using the name the Kig-Yar, the Humans, the Unggoy and the species that were generally lower on the status chain then the Yanme'e are gave us. "I can see why you were sent here."
"Yes. Indeed. I thought that me getting horribly punished over there was the point of this exercise, not getting a paltry amount of some cheap ore."
"You are deeply mistaken, Drone. The Always Revere the Gods is a cargo ship. It only has a larger cadre of Kig-Yar soldiers just so that it can double as a prison ship. Since, admittedly, there are not many criminals among your people, the Revere doesn't have to serve as a prison ship very often. So your schedule takes place after the lithium's."
"Oh, I'm glad my cruel and horrible punishment isn't the top priority here. I always like taking second string to large lumps of possibly the most ridiculous element ever."
At this, the Shipmistress turned away. "You know, Drone, sometimes I pity your people as they slave away down there. But then someone like you comes along and spoils the poetic thought."
I decided that continuing conversation wasn't really important. So I shut up and just stared at the long train of lithium. I began to hum. Humming is probably the most innocuous thing a Drone could do; but to the other species of the Covenant, it is the most annoying thing you could do. Did you know, human, that you are the only other species that we've encountered that can hum by natural means? Sangheili and the Prophets can sing, but they can't hum!
So I hummed. Finally one of my wardens hit me on the head. I think it was the same one. Jerk.
Okay, with humming impossible, I decided to seek some other form of entertainment. So I just looked at the ship chart that hung on the wall behind me. It wasn't even holographic. No, it was carved. At least carving was marginally less barbaric than writing.
The chart was headed: 'Yanme'e Prison Ship 02 Designation; Always Revere the Gods'
How pointless. And misleading. It was titled 'Yanme'e', I suppose, because it carried Yanme'e prisoners, which as the Shipmistress just said, was only a part-time job. Second of all, the only two people on this ship who could actually read were probably me and the Shipmistress.
Underneath the title, it showed the structure of the ship. It was the traditional Kig-Yar design, a thin, smooth, rod-like ship; tapered at one end and cut of flat on the other, where the engines were. Attached to it on both sides were large, bulbous tumor-like cargo pods that were probably just welded on, where I was.
Finally, the long, ponderous tide of lithium barrels stopped flowing. I was almost happy about that. Make no mistake, despite my complaining, I really didn't want to go into the Detention Facility. And yet waiting was dull. Ah, the contradictions of life.
The two Kig-Yar beside me pushed me toward the grav lift. Whoopee. I went without much resistance. Oddly enough, this seemed to surprise the Kig-Yar. I suppose, despite the rarity of Yanme'e prisoners, they had shipped enough around to realize the dangers a Yanme'e, even hobbled and unarmed, can do if they put their minds to it.
But I didn't want any undue trouble. I went. As I approached the grav tube, two more Kig-Yar joined my entourage. Once again, what was the point?
I stepped gingerly inside the grav tube, and then more surely paced into it. Once I was deep enough inside, the tube took hold; suddenly, the Detention Facility was down and the Revere was up. This is disorienting enough for most Covenant, but it's positively nerve-wracking for a Yanme'e. Around me my guards pointed their pistols at me threateningly. I suppose that this was the time most Yanme'e that will go insane go insane. They needn't bother, though. They wouldn't get no trouble from 'ol Wingbeat.
There was more than enough of that to go around.
You know, I was almost exactly in the center of that grav tube when it all happened. From my perspective between the ship and the station, I had an almost completely unobscured look of the horrors that were to appear.
Humans tell stories of horror about how they watched in terror as large Covenant ships arrive. But really, there are no ships as horrifying as those of humanity. The imposing black ships of your people can strike fear. They are black as space itself, and where they move, the very stars wink out.
No self-respecting Sangheili or Jiralhanae would ever admit to fear, but if they were handcuffed, hobbled, unarmed and stuck inside a grav tube just as a human ship appeared, they'd probably be screaming on the inside.